As little as we know about the future for which we are preparing our students, it is clear that it will be a place that is governed by information. Accessing, processing, building with, and communicating that information is how we will all make our livings.

Being literate in this future will certainly involve the ability to read, write, and do basic math. However, the concept of literacy in the 21st century will be far richer and more comprehensive than the 3 Rs of the one room school house, a legacy that still strongly influences today’s education environment.

Applying this new information landscape to teaching and learn can yield powerful instructional experiences for students. Yet, there are hidden dangers along this landscape. In this workshop educators, David Warlick and Nancy Willard will review both sides of this issue.

David Warlick — Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century, ISBN-10: 1586831305
Nancy Willard — Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats, ISBN-10: 0972423605

• Online Wiki Handouts for — Learning & Literacy for the 21st Century and Social Networking & Cyberbullying

This is a Pre-K through grade 8 independent school in Houston, Texas, and it took a long time to get here yesterday in a little jet, cramped up beside a man who was at least as large as I am.

Today is mostly about the kids. I started off talking about the millennial generation, how the children in our schools are a different breed — literally wired differently by their rich information experiences. That will be followed by a long session on Web 2.0 applications, the main goal being to demystify these technologies (blogs, wikis, podcasting, social bookmarks, RSS) and to suggest ways that faculty can uses many of these tools to create powerful learning experiences for their students. Finally, I’ll do a session on video games as learning engines. I continue to learn more about this topic, though at a more fundamental level, like, “What is a game?”

Here are the online wiki handouts:

• Millinnials in Our Classrooms
• Harnessing the New Web
• Podcasting Handouts
• Video Games as Learning Engines
• Learning & Literacy in the 21st Century

Education is perhaps the most critical issues facing San Mateo and the entire country today. We are doing a better job of teaching our children. But we are simply doing a better job of preparing them for the 1950s, not for the rich, vibrant, and rapidly changing future that they will inherit. These presentations will seek to describe how the very nature of information has changed in the past ten to fifteen years. Participants will also have an opportunity to explore what these shifts in the shape of information mean to our very definitions of being literate in the 21st century.

• What does it mean to be a reader when information is increasingly networked?
• What does it mean to be a processor of information when information is increasingly digital?
• What does it mean to be a writer, when we are all overwhelmed by writings, more than we can possibly read?
• What are the ethical issues of this new information landscape?

Here are the wiki handouts for the three presentations I will be delivering today:

• Three E’s: Exposing the Truth, Employing Information to Solve Problems, Expressing Ideas Compellingly
• The 4th “E” – Ethics
• Web 2.0

The conference program was waiting for me at my hotel yesterday. Topics include United Streaming, First Class, podcasting, accessibility options for Macs and PCs, learning communities, web page creation, movie production, and teacher productivity tools — and that’s just the morning. I love these district professional development conferences.

My topics will include 21st century literacy skills, web 2.0, video games, and information ethics. My part will be a little further “out there” but definately in the scheme of what the Menomonie School District is providing to their professional educators — the professional respect to bring them together to be learners.

Here are links to the online (wiki) handouts for my session:

• Learning & Literacy in the 21st Century
• An Educator’s Guide to Web 2.0
• Video Games as Learning Engines
• Right & Wrong on the Information Highway

Today, my work will be wide ranging. I’ll be participating in a round-table with teachers, facilitate two forums with students, work with the technology committee, and then a final presentation for the faculty. This is my first gig since November, so I’ll have to be wheeled out of here this afternoon.

The main topic here will be Flat Classrooms and the conditions that are challenging us, as educators, to rethink and retool how and what we teach.

Here is a hyperlink to the wiki notes for my Flat Classroom. However, all of the other handouts will be available from there.

• Flat World, Flat Classrooms

This is one of the largest state ed tech conferences in the U.S. and one of the high points in my working year. I also, always, work myself nearly to death. I’ll be teaching four preconference workshops and seven breakout sessions. No keynotes or featured addresses this year. That’s being left of to better minds, like Tony Brewer, Tammy Worcester, and Patrick Crispen.

The basic theme of all of my sessions will be that the shape of information is changing. Not only are more of us getting more ubiquitous access to digital content, but it is starting to grow in new ways, to be remixable, and to literally remix itself, it is starting to become a tool in ways that were not possible before — and the potential learning implications are astounding, for educators and life-long learners who are paying attention.

So here are links to my online handouts, arranged by days of the conference.

Monday – 11.27.06

• The Art of the New Web
• The Art of Blogging

Tuesday – 11.28.06

• The Art of Using Wikis
• The Art of the New Web

Wednesday – 11.29.06

• A Beginner’s Introduction to Wikis
• EdubloggerCon — This will be an open discussion of blogging and other issues of the new web (Web 2.0)
• Web 2.0 Conversations — This will be a group sharing of cool Web 2.0 tools.
• A Beginners Introduction to Video Games

Thursday – 11.30.06

• A Beginner’s Introduction to Video Games
• A Beginner’s Introduction to Wikis
• A Beginner’s Introduction to The New Web

technorati tags:warlick, education, technology, wiki, blog, web20, web2.0, rss, ncetc, ncetc06

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The theme tagline of this conference is Teaching The Millennial Generation. It’s an interesting conference, sponsored jointly by the California League of Middle Schools, League of High Schools, and Computer Using Educators. I suspect that in attendence will be middle school and high school teachers of all brands and a peppering of technology educators. That’s just the sense that I have.

The keynote combination is a powerful one. Leslie Fisher will be delivering one of the keynotes. She’s a geek gal, and one of two true and duely crowned gadget queens I know. I am sure she will leave here audience with their chins on the ground and their credit cards poised.

I, on the other hand, will be talking about the generation, for which the gadgets are being invented, the Millennials. It’s a presentation that I have delivered a couple of times, but have restructured slightly for California, wrapping it around the new story pillars provided by anthropologist, Jennifer James. We’ll look at the economic landscape that our children are growing up in, their landscape of play, work, and learning, and the information landscape from which we should be teaching them. Here are the online wiki handouts:

• Millennials Learning

I’ll also be delivering two concurrent sessions on blogging and podcasting. Their wiki handouts are at:

• An Educator’s Guide to Blogging
• An Educator’s Guide to Podcasting

Today’s work is in the beautiful Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. It took some getting to, with delays all over, due to, well Chicago. I got a car there and drove the rest of the way, wishing it was day light. I suspect that I may have missed some scenery, but I don’t know. I am fairly certain that this is a beautiful place, if only because the name of the town appears to be a prepositional phrase, it’s in French, and there’s a lake (I saw it on a map).

The event is the Wisconsin Collaborative Online Network (WCON) Symposium, a gathering of educators involved in online learning. Yesterday’s keynote address was delivered by Susan Patrick, whom I saw speak a year ago at North Carolina’s Online Learning Conference in Asheville (another beautiful place). I’ll do my standard fair here, beginning with a session that will introduce attendees to wikis, blogs, and podcasting — in that order. This will be an operational presentation designed to define these applications and demonstrate their use. Here are the wiki handouts:

• Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasting

This session will be followed by a keynote address on contemporary literacy, what I am increasingly called Learning Literacy. The presentation seeks to redefining or expand what it means to be a readers, a processor of information, and a communicating when information is becoming increasingly networked, digital, and overwhelming. All though this is not a specifically distance-learning topic, it is, I believe, ideal for this group, as they work almost exclusively within this information landscape. The wiki notes will be available at:

• Literacy & Learning in the 21st Century

Yesterday, I attended Will Richardson’s presentation about the influences that Web 2.0 has had on literacy. Today, I’ll be exploring how the mere computer and the mere Internet have impacted on our definition of literacy. Information has become increasingly networked, digital, and overwhelming. Each of these characteristics of this emerging new information landscape have impacted significantly on what we might consider the basic skills of using information to accomplish goals, literacy. Here are the online wiki handouts:

• Literacy & Learning in the 21st Century

That keynote address will be followed by a breakout session, which is usually delivered as a keynote address, Telling the New Story. This is a presentation that was developed as a follow-up to Literacy & Learning, since people frequently asked the question, “OK, I agree. So how do we make it happen.”

“We make it happen by telling a compelling new story about teaching and learning and classrooms in the twenty-first century, a story that is so exciting that it shatters the stories that we gained from the 12 or 13 years that we all spent in schools during the 1950, ’60s, ’70s, & ’80s. Here are the online wiki handouts”:

• Telling the New Story

Will and others have already presented many good sessions about Web 2.0 tools. I feel a little like a late-comer with this presentation. But my style is different, and this is all sooooo new, and any many ways, it is counter intuitive to the ways that we think of teaching and learning. So I suspect it is a topic that needs to be heard again. Here are the online wiki handouts.

• Harnessing the New Shape of Information

I’ve been looking forward to this session. It’s another online presentation, a Webinar, for the Discovery Educator Network. We did some run-throughs yesterday, with mixed success. The problems seem to stem from the fact that I’m using a Mac. Lots of people use Macs. They need to fix that. As it turned out, the company had, but not in the version that DEN is using. And they keep asking if I’m using an Intel Mac. Do I really need an Intel Mac? Can I sell Brenda on that? 🙂

To add excitement to the whole thing, New England DEN members will be in the room with me, so I’ll actually have some humans to present to. Should be easier.

The topic is about flat. It’s how hierarchies, of many different types and styles, are fading. We’ve all heard about the flattening of the world (The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman). But what about the flattening of the web and of information in general. And, in what ways, might we consider our classrooms flattening, and how do we drive learning, if we can’t rely on gravity any more? A good question.

• Online wiki handouts for Flat Classrooms